Bride of Tash
by A. C. Fellows
Summary: How would it feel to grow to adulthood in a fantasy world, only to be dragged back to a conventional childhood? Why did the Tisrocs claim to be descended from the evil god Tash? What would it be like to live in a world where God personally interfered in the course of events? Bride of Tash explores these concepts of Narnia through the adventures of Josie, a young Australian girl.
1. An Unpromising Beginning

_**Updated regularly in chapters.**_

_**The Kindle-friendly version is available at forgottenplanet dot com. (Google "Bride of Tash" to find it!)**_

**_Chapters are also readable there, and are updated first._**

* * *

Tash had always been told he was perfectly and completely useless.

'Perfectly and completely useless,' his father would say, in a voice that was an instrument for making absolutely clear statements of mathematically precise fact. His brothers would nod their heads solemnly in agreement, and his sisters and mothers would creak wheezily from their alcoves to show that they also agreed that Tash was perfectly and completely useless.

Tash would bow his head and let his arms droop, as if to agree that what his father said was true.

'And yet,' Tash would think to himself, 'I am not useless at all.' And he would daydream of what he would do one day to prove to everyone that he was not perfectly and completely useless and lose track of what his father was saying.

It is not my intention to excuse anything Tash did or didn't do on the grounds that he had an unpleasant childhood. I am not telling you this so that you will feel sorry for him, or so you can psychoanalyse him. It is only that if Tash hadn't had an unpleasant childhood, he would have gone on to live a very ordinary life like his brothers and would not come into this story at all.

For the first four years of his life no one said a kind word to Tash. Four years among the thalarka is about the same as fifteen or sixteen of our years, for the world of the thalarka rolls sluggishly around their great green marrow-fat pea of a sun. In all that time no one told Tash that he was anything other than perfectly and completely useless.

In point of fact, he was useless. To live in the Plain of Ua requires stamina, to work all day in the endless fields of mud: planting grith, and fertilising grith, and weeding grith, and warding off the beasts of mire and mist that are eager to eat the tender young grith plants, and harvesting the spindly fruit of the grith that must be picked in darkness and husked and pickled the same night it is picked so it will not spoil. Tash was weak, and could not do any of these things for more than half an hour at a stretch. Furthermore, he was sickly, and was forever getting fevers that made him no good for any work at all for days on end. Worse, he was impatient and easily distracted, and long before he was too weak to work he would usually have wandered off to tease some many-legged crawling thing with a bit of stick, or make little dams and canals in the mud with the hoe he was supposed to be weeding with. And he was clumsy: he would trample the little grith plants, and pull them up instead of the weeds, and at harvest time he would get bits of husk in the pickling pot, and drop fruit in the mud, and stab his fingers on the prickly parts of the fruit so that they swelled up and were perfectly and completely useless for any more husking.

Once in each long year of the thalarka was the festival of Quambu Vashan, which was held in the city where the Procurator of the Overlord had her alcove, some days journey away on the edge of the Plain of Ua. There was always great feasting at the time of the festival of Quambu Vashan, and acrobats and clowns, though only old Raaku of all the villagers had ever seen them.

Two or three times a year the rain would stop and the sun would peer down through a canyon in the clouds. Then the thalarka in the fields would down tools and try not to look up at the great green marrow-fat pea of the sun and mutter proverbs. Tash would always look up at the sunlit sides of the canyons of cloud- which were almost too bright to see- and dream of what it must be like to be up there.

Eight times a year was the frenzy of the harvest, and after the harvest came the feasting, and after the feasting the coming of the Overlord's tax collectors, to carry off rather a lot of the pickled grith that was left over from the feasting.

Two or three hundred times a year there would be some sort of holiday to break the round of working in the fields, with the proper dates for each holiday kept in order by the priests. There would be dancing in figures, and wagers on fights between caged mire beasts that were things like hairless weasels, and the priests would usually sacrifice something and make patterns on the walls of the priest-house with dripping bits from its inside.

Every day it rained.

The plain of Ua was a plain of grey mud, and the skies were of grey cloud, and the stick-like grith were grey, and the huts of the thalarka were grey. The thalarka themselves were also grey. The huts of the thalarka were dry inside with a fitful clammy dryness, in which lamps burned only with a feeble bluish flame. Tash thought fire was splendid, since it was not grey. That was how he managed to burn one of his hands rather badly just before the harvest. At this particular harvest he was needed more than usual, since his two oldest brothers had been married off into other villages since the harvest before, but because of his injury he ended up being even less useful than usual.

This was not long before the festival of Quambu Vashan. Besides clowns and acrobats, great numbers of sacrifices of a particular kind were always required at this festival, so it was the custom of the tax collectors of the Overlord to demand from each village they visited at the harvest an appropriate sacrifice. This would not be important if it were not that the sacrifices required for the festival of Quambu Vashan were thalarka of about four years of age. It was required that they have all their limbs intact, and have no obvious serious blemishes, but otherwise it was all the same to the Overlord whether they were useless or not. This part of the festival did not feature in Raaku's stories, and the older thalarka of the village tended not to discuss it in the presence of younger ones.

'We should give Tash to the tax collectors for sacrifice at the festival of Quambu Vashan,' said Tash's father to his mothers one night. 'For he is perfectly and completely useless for anything else.'

A family that freely gave the sacrifice for the festival of Quambu Vashan would be noted on the books of the tax collectors and not be called upon to give another for a generation, during which time more useful members of the family suitable for sacrifice would be spared to work in the fields. It was also the custom in Tash's village for the families who had not given a son or daughter to the tax collectors to bring presents to the family that had, and speak approvingly of them, so Tash's father's suggestion was quite a good one. It is only fair on Tash's mothers to report that they did not croak their agreement immediately, not until Tash's father had reminded them of these things.

So after the harvest when the tax collectors of the Overlord came to the village Tash was sent off with them.

'You are being apprenticed to the tax collectors,' Tash's father told him. 'You will leave with them when they have finished lunch.'

Tash did not realise why he had been sent off until he had been travelling the rest of that day with the tax collectors. He had spent most of the afternoon staring up at the roiling patterns of the clouds, imagining that they had hidden meanings. They were like secret symbols from a mysterious power in the sky sending orders to its minions in the mire, in a tremendously complicated language that never said exactly the same thing twice. The tax collectors had already collected four other young thalarka for the festival of Quambu Vashan. Three of them were girls, and Tash could not understand their speech – it was another part of Tash's uselessness that he had a bad ear for women's language – and the fourth was a boy. He was slow-witted and smaller than Tash, but he had paid more attention to the world around him.

'Where do you think we will stop?' said Tash as it started to get dark, meaning 'where are we going to stop tonight', but the slow-witted one took him at his word and said, 'At the festival'.

'Why did you say, 'at the festival'?' said Tash, since he was bored and couldn't think of anything better to do than quibble with the slow-witted boy. 'Why not say we're going to the city of the Overlord's Procurator?'

'I don't understand,' said the slow-witted boy. He hung his head and drooped his arms in exactly the same way Tash had always done when his father told him how useless he was.

'So, what does the festival have to do with it?' said Tash impatiently.

'I'm going to be a sacrifice at the festival,' said the slow-witted boy. He said it in the same way that Tash's brothers would say things like 'I'm going to weed the south-eastern corner of the field today'.

Tash looked around at the others and thought that the tax collectors had treated all five of them in exactly the same way since they had left the village. Here they were, all walking in a line through the mud. And he realised that his father had very probably lied to him, and that he was going to be a sacrifice as well. For a while he could say nothing at all.

'I seem to be in terrible trouble,' Tash thought.

Over the next few days of tramping across the Plain of Ua Tash tried to escape many times, but the tax collectors were experienced collectors of sacrifices, and he had no luck. They went through nine more villages and collected nine more sacrifices for the festival of Quambu Vashan. Five of these were boys, and they were all slow-witted except for Zish, who was contrary.

'I was opposed to the ways of the village because they were brutish and stupid,' said Zish, in a way Tash had never heard before, that was bitter and mirthful at the same time, as if it pleased Zish more than anything to call the ways of his village brutish and stupid. 'So I'm to be sacrificed now,' he went on. 'At least my blood will be of some use to the Overlord Varkarian, if it is of no further use to me.'

'I'm sure there is some way to escape,' said Tash. 'If we work together'-

'There is no way to escape,' said Zish in his bitter mirthful way. 'This is our destiny, Valgur' - he had confused Tash with one of the other boys, whose name was Valgur, and took no notice of Tash's efforts to correct him - 'to serve the Overlord by being sacrifices at the festival of Quambu Vashan. Our destiny is inexorable. Our destiny is irresistible.'

Tash stopped listening to Zish as he talked more about inexorable destiny and the usefulness of being sacrificed. Tash was not sure whether this was what Zish really believed or not. Perhaps he did not know himself whether he believed it or not. Sometimes Zish talked in such a way that Tash thought he must be mad, and sometimes Zish told Tash that he was mad.

'I have said the same thing to you a dozen times, Valgur, and you haven't said a word back, just gone on staring at the clouds,' said Zish. 'You must be mad. It is no wonder you are only fit to be sacrificed.'

At any rate Zish was too contrary to be in any way helpful to Tash.

If he had not known he was going to be sacrificed at the end of it Tash would have had a lovely time. The long hours of walking were dreadfully wearying at first, but he felt himself growing stronger each day, and the sacrifices were fed twice a day with the freshly pickled grith the tax collectors had gathered, which was more and nicer food than Tash had eaten before. Each day he saw new villages, with new and different temples, and new fields cut into different shapes, and great coiling worms of rivers, and broad lakes spotted with rafts, and companies of spear-men and javelin-women marching on the highroads, their armour as silvery-grey as the lakes and spotted with metal spikes instead of rafts. He had seen nothing but his village and the fields immediately around it for his whole life and found he quite liked travelling.

At the edge of the Procurator's city Tash's party met up with several other parties of tax collectors. All the sacrifices were collected together and tied in a long chain to keep them tidy, ankle to ankle and wrist to wrist, and in this way they all shuffled together into the Procurator's city. This city was made of grey stone, huts and palaces alike, and they were scattered together in no particular order over the plain, at first with plenty of space between them but then closer and closer together until they almost blocked out the clouds.

'Do not let the splendour of this place fool you, Valgur,' said Zish. 'Here, too, the ways of the common people are brutish and stupid. But we are irresistibly called to a higher destiny. Inexorably!'

In the middle of the city was the Tower of the Procurator of the Overlord, ten or twelve times higher than any other built thing Tash had ever seen. It was carved on every side with images of mist-beasts and mire-beasts and thalarka, all larger than life, and all making gestures of obeisance to the sigil of the Overlord Varkarian, which was at the top of the tower and was worked in huge blue stones like fire.

'Sweeter than narbul venom is it to serve the Overlord,' intoned the most senior of the tax collectors, when the party could first see this sigil in blue stones like fire. All the more junior tax collectors dutifully intoned in unison that it was sweeter than narbul venom to serve the Overlord, and so did the long line of sacrifices. Strictly speaking Tash had no idea whether this was true or not, having never tasted narbul venom nor anything other than grith. But he intoned along with the others. They only had a few moments to look at the tower. Tash would have stared longer, but was dragged along as he was chained to everyone else. Then they were steered through a big black door and down a long ramp which stretched down into a chamber somewhere underneath the tower. The ramp ended somewhere in the middle of the chamber, which stretched off into darkness on every side, over-warm and evil-smelling. Some dozens of boys and girls for the sacrifice were there already, chained to posts set in the floor in groups of six or seven. On top of these posts there were lanterns, and every post that had thalarka chained to it had its lantern lit, with a dancing flame that was more green than blue. Tash's long line of sacrifices was split up into groups of six or seven and chained to posts, and at the same time the lanterns on top of the post were lit. But there were still many many more empty posts with unlit lanterns.

The chamber was drier than any place Tash had ever been. You or I would have found this its one redeeming feature, but to Tash it was unnerving. The dryness hurt his ears and made his throat itch.

The thalarka who lit the lanterns was an old priest woman, bent over like a grith plant that has grown in too dark a shadow, and she lit the lanterns with a thin silvery stick longer than she was tall. Tash found the lighting of the lanterns very interesting and wondered if the old priest stayed down in the chamber all the time, waiting for a reason to light the lanterns, or if she went somewhere else. She seemed so completely a creature of the dark chamber that Tash could not imagine her being anywhere else. Tash ended up chained with a group of dim-witted boys around one of the pillars at the edge of the darkness.

As soon as all the sacrifices were properly chained a group of younger priests handed out something to eat that was not grith. They were cakes of something very much nicer than grith, though I dare say you or I would still have found them very nasty, and Tash devoured his greedily. So did all the others. When they had finished eating two more priests in more resplendent garments – still mostly grey, but shiny – came and gave speeches, one in male language and one in female language.

The speech that Tash heard went something like this:

'Welcome in the name of the Overlord Varkarian. Truly it is sweeter than narbul venom, and more pleasant than the song of horn and cymbal, to serve the Overlord Varkarian. Truly are you favoured, for through your sacrifice the Overlord will be glorified. Truly will your sacrifice bring the inscrutable designs of the Overlord closer to their inexorable fruition. Though you may have been useless until this moment, very soon you will attain to a destiny greater than that of many a skilled spear-man or artifex. The part you play in the designs of the Overlord is a very great one.'

There was much more like this and Tash soon stopped paying attention to it. He was more interested in the costumes of the priests than in what they were saying. Their chest pieces were particularly splendid, much more splendid than the chestpieces the priests of his village wore when they sacrificed mire beasts. They were set with such marvellous stones, blue and green and other colours he could not name, and shone delightfully in the lanternlight.

The priest explained while Tash was not listening that they would be given things to eat as nice as the cakes, or nicer, for the next few days until the festival, and that they would be taken out in batches and cleaned and ornamented before the ceremony, and then again that theirs was a rare and glorious destiny.

Because he was not listening Tash was taken by surprise to be taken out and scrubbed and plastered with some sort of oil and hung with jangling bits of fine chain. The only good thing about the oil was that it made it quite impossible to tell how evil-smelling the chamber was. The smell of the oil stung and tickled and burned and it was almost impossible to think of anything else when you had been plastered with it.

'What's that you've done to your hand, lad?' asked the young priest who was seeing to the oiling of the sacrifices. 'Burnt it, eh?' The young priest found this amusing. 'Well, mind you keep it away from the lanterns now. Stick one little finger in the fire and you'll be sizzled to a crisp in an instant, with that oil on you.'

Tash took respectful note of this advice.

Tash had been chained to a post on the other side of the ramp from Zish, and the dim-witted boys who were chained with him were too dim-witted to be any use talking to. He spent the night peering out into the further reaches of the chamber, wondering what was there and thinking of all the marvellous things he had seen in the last few days and what a pity it was that he would be sacrificed in a few more days. The sacrifices around him shuffled and wheezed and jangled in their sleep and the smell of the oil hung thick and heavy in the air. No one came and turned down the lanterns, but they seemed to dim of their own accord, and burnt with feeble flames that were greenish-grey, if such a flame were possible.

Tash found it impossible to get free of his chains. Even if he had, it would surely have been impossible for him to have forced his way through the heavy doors, past the watchers beyond, and made his way to somewhere safe.

'It seems such a waste, when the world is so big and interesting, to be ending so soon,' he thought to himself. And a black mood took him and he thought to himself: 'Perhaps I am useless after all'.


	2. The Vanilla Bush Wind

_**Updated regularly in chapters.**_

_**The Kindle-friendly version is available at forgottenplanet dot com. (Google "Bride of Tash" to find it!)**_

**_Chapters are also readable there, and are updated first._**

* * *

Josie held her face into the wind and felt the wild exuberance of it like she had so many nights before. This time there was something different in the air, she was sure. The faintest trace of mists that had hung over ancient hedgerows, winds that had whistled across heather and down the chimneys of stone cottages, smoke belched from factories and railway engines.

'I can smell England,' she told Miss Miles.

'Don't be silly,' said Miss Miles. As usual, Josie could hear in her voice that Miss Miles was nervous about being on deck after dark, though she tried not to show it. 'England is still hundreds of miles away.'

'Yes, Miss Miles,' said Josie and sighed. She did not want to get into an argument with her chaperone, in which Miss Miles would invariably be the sensible one and she would be the self-evidently silly one. At the very least Miss Miles would be upset enough to make her come inside. She was always looking for excuses to make Josie come in out of the wind and the sea spray.

'Do you think father will remember me?' said Josie.

'Of course he will, dear,' said Miss Miles.

'It's been almost ten years,' said Josie. 'I would think you could bring just about any girl of about the right age and colouring and say she was Josephine Furness. Do you think he could tell the difference?'

'Don't be silly,' said Miss Miles, and gave Josie's hand a squeeze. 'Of course he'll recognise his own daughter.' But to Josie Miss Miles sounded more nervous than ever.

Josie had only the vaguest memories of her father, a whiskery thundercloud of tobacco and eau de cologne that would roll into her life from time to time and then roll out again as quickly as it had come, 'on business' to Perth or the Eastern Goldfields or some other place, until one day just before her fifth birthday he had gone away 'on business' to the other side of the world and never returned. And now Josie's Mama was gone, and her dear sister Gerry who had always looked after her when Mama had one of her turns was gone, and she was going to England to live with the whiskery thundercloud who had abandoned them so long ago.

It had all been sorted out by post. It was impossible to tell, from the stilted words of her father's letters, if he really wanted her or not. She had made Miss Miles read and re-read them to her on the voyage until she knew every word by heart. It was possible that her father was stricken with grief for the troubles that had happened to the family he left behind, and was desperate to make what amends he could by welcoming his lost daughter, but just could not find the words to say so. Or, it was possible that he found the whole matter a great bother and distraction from whatever he did 'on business' and had long ago put out of his mind that he had left a family in Australia. She sighed again.

'It's getting terribly cold,' said Miss Miles, with a shiver. The wind had shifted somehow so that it seemed to blow full in their faces whichever way they were facing. 'We should be getting inside.'

'Can I wait out just a moment longer?' said Josie.

It was a plea she made every night, and every night Miss Miles made the same reply. Miss Miles had been Gerry's friend- she had been Narelle to Gerry, and was not so very many years older than Josie herself- and did not have the backbone an older chaperone would have had.

'Just for a moment, Josie,' said Miss Miles. 'I'll wait for you inside.'

'Thank you, Miss Miles,' said Josie, and turned to give her a smile.

'Just one more minute, then you come inside,' said Miss Miles. She walked away, but Josie could tell she was hovering in the doorway, watching her.

'Go on,' said Josie. 'I'm not made of cut glass, you know.'

Josie heard Miss Miles mutter something about wilful girls and close the door. She was probably still hovering, just on the other side, but Josie did not care.

Josie could no longer smell England on the wind. It was all sea now, heavy with mermaid's tears and codfish and cold dark water that had spent a few lifetimes circling the world far below the surface before returning to the air again just now. Josie's face was bitterly cold and if she had been sensible she would have suggested going inside herself ten minutes ago. She refused to admit that she was cold. She let the spray sting her face, trying to recapture the trace of England that she had smelled before. Probably the wind had shifted, and was coming out of the open ocean now. It was certainly getting stronger, minute by minute.

'If only I could be sure father would be happy to see me,' Josie thought. Mama had never said a harsh word about Josie's father, only looked terribly woeful whenever he was spoken of. Not that he was spoken of much. There had been letters when Josie had been younger, but they were the same sort of stilted letters father had sent after the tragedy, and they had stopped coming a long time ago.

The wind seemed to stop entirely for an instant, and start up again from another direction, a proper gale. This wind had the trace of some flower in it that smelled a bit like vanilla bush - it wasn't vanilla bush, but it was something like it. Josie did not have time to think about what it could be, because at that moment the ship reared up like some fool of a thoroughbred and tipped her over the railing into the sea. Josie had no sensation of passing through the air but felt immediately plunged into the water.

'I suppose I am going to die now so there was no use worrying,' thought Josie, surprised at how unafraid she seemed to be. There was no question of swimming in the heavy coat and long skirts she had been wearing to keep off the cold on deck. Josie was not sure whether she was upside down or right side up. She tried to compose herself and say a prayer, but all that came into her head was 'now I lay me down to sleep' which was not particularly appropriate for being tumbled through the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Josie felt very sorry for Miss Miles, who would surely think it was all her fault that she had been lost overboard.

'How silly I've been worrying about such a lot of silly things,' thought Josie. She remembered in particular one time she had been beastly to little Ada Plummer over something that now seemed of no consequence whatsoever.

'I hope it won't be too horrible drowning,' she thought. Then she was afraid, and thrashed desperately about without thinking at all.

Suddenly she was not in the water anymore. She did not feel desperately short of breath, and she did not feel particularly cold. For the merest instant she thought she might be in Heaven. She was lying on her back in soft grass, with sun on her face, and the air was filled with the smell of the flower that was something like vanilla bush- and also lemon blossoms, and jasmine, and three or four other pleasant things that she couldn't identify.

'But I can't see,' Josie thought. 'Surely in Heaven I would be able to see.' She put her hand in front of her eyes and felt the flutter of her eyelids to make sure that she did not just have her eyes closed. She was still blind.

'And I wouldn't be wearing these clothes' she told herself. In Heaven she would have expected to be wearing flowing robes – or possibly nothing at all - but she seemed to be wearing the exact clothes she had been wearing on the deck of the _Southern Cross_, though they were now dry.

Josie sat up. She could hear birds singing, but not of any sort she recognised. She could also hear running water. She seemed to be only a yard or so from the edge of a stream. There were branches moving in the wind, but not right above her; maybe fifty feet away. The grass had little flowers in it, tufted ones shaped a bit like dandelions, and it was from these that the vanilla bush smell came from. The sun on her face cooled momentarily, then warmed again, and she imagined there must be little clouds scooting across the sky.

'Curiouser and curiouser,' she said to herself, because she had to hear the sound of a human voice, and the only thing she had ever heard of before that was remotely similar to what had just happened to her was what happened to Alice when she fell down a rabbit hole.

Josie stood up carefully expecting to be aching all over, but was not really surprised to find that she wasn't. She felt more cheerful than she had in a long time. It had been of course a very cheering surprise to find herself alive at all. But even if she had been in no danger before, she felt she would have found the place she was in cheering. Somehow she had fallen into spring out of winter. She took a few careful steps and heard the whirr of wings- some of the unfamiliar birds had decided she had come too close. A few steps more, and her outstretched hands brushed against a bush. It had soft fleshy leaves that were not smooth, but covered with down, and it smelled marvellous but strange, like the birds sounded. She brushed her arm up and down, side to side, to get a feel for how big the bush was, and as she did so there was the startled sound of a hoofed animal leaping up and cantering away. It sounded like a sheep-sized animal rather than a horse-sized one. She could smell it too, a little- a warm deserty smell that was not at all like sheep's wool. The noise of the animal startled Josie in turn, and she laughed like she sometimes did when she had a fright that turned out not to be so bad after all.

'Excuse me!' she said.

The cantering slowed to a walk and then stopped. 'What did you say?' said a voice. It was a voice that seemed to belong to a girl some years younger than Josie, and one that could have made a good living singing on the stage.

'I said excuse me,' said Josie. It had not sounded to Josie as if there had been anyone else there, but she supposed there must have been. 'I didn't mean to startle it.'

'I've never heard a Daughter of Helen say 'excuse me' before,' said the voice. It really was a very pretty voice. 'You have a peculiar way of talking' it added cautiously.

'You have a rather peculiar way of talking yourself,' said Josie.

'I didn't mean to be disrespectful,' said the voice. It sounded nervous and so did the animal, which took a few paces back and forth. Josie wondered if she was riding the animal and if in that case she was about to suddenly bolt off. The voice continued. 'If you don't mind me saying so, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you Daughters of Helen and Sons of Frank are usually too caught up in your own affairs as Ladies and Lords of Creation to care whether you startle gazelles or not.'

Josie hadn't heard any sound of harness, or of anyone moving about, just the animal. She had been reminded of Alice and the looking glass ever since she arrived in this place, and thinking of the conversation Alice had with a fawn in the wood she asked a question she had never imagined she would ask anyone.

'Are you a gazelle?' she asked.

'Yes' said the voice. 'My name is Alabitha. My mother is Falabitha, and my father is Caladru, who is the Prince of all the gazelles in this country.'

'My name is Josephine Furness,' said Josie. 'You can call me Josie instead of Miss Furness if you like. My mother's name was Annabelle, and my father's name is Leonard. Pleased to meet you, Alabitha.'

'I'm so glad you're pleased to meet me,' said the gazelle warily. 'I suppose I'm pleased to meet you as well.' There was a pause and a shuffling of cloven feet while Josie wondered which of the many questions she had she would ask, but Alabitha spoke again first. 'Have you come from one of those faraway northern countries where men and animals get along with each other, Lady Josie?'

'I'm from somewhere a long way off,' said Josie. 'It can't be any of the countries you are thinking of since we don't have any talking animals. I don't know how you would get there from here.'

'Oh' said Alabitha. 'Are you lost? Where are you trying to get to? I know all of the ways around here.'

Josie remembered the Red Queen saying that all of the ways were her ways, and for the first time since she arrived in this place felt uneasy. What exactly was she going to do? Where was she, and how was she going to survive in this place?

'I don't know,' said Josie. 'I expect I must be lost. I don't know how I got here, or where here is.'

'That's too bad' said the gazelle. She padded a little closer to her. 'I don't know how you got here either. I'm sure you weren't here when I got here, and I'm sure I would have woken up when you got here – unless I'm getting a stuffed ear.' The gazelle snorted and shook her head three or four times.

'The last I remember I fell in the ocean' said Josie. 'And then I was lying next to the water here.'

'I've never seen the ocean,' said the gazelle. 'It's a frightful long way to the ocean from here. This is Lion's Pool. See the carved stone where the water comes out of the rock?'

'I don't,' said Josie. 'I don't actually see anything. I'm blind.'

'Oh' said Alabitha. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's not your fault,' said Josie. 'I'm used to it.'

'I can tell you what the carved stone looks like' said Alabitha. 'It's carved to look like a lion, as large as life. The Sons of Frank and Daughters of Helen made it long ago, to show that it was one of the places where the Lion appeared.'

'The Lion?'

'The Lion, you know, Aslan,' said the gazelle, in the gentle but nervous way you remind someone who has had a bad shock of something that they really ought to know.

At the sound of the name Aslan Josie felt something like she had felt when she could smell England on the wind over the ocean. It was like the first breeze from a far country that was at the same time terrifying and familiar, where everything is larger and brighter and stronger than home, yet at the same time in some strange way more truly 'home' than the home she had always known. She felt as if she never wanted to hear the name again, and as if she could listen to it forever. At that moment the first wanting was stronger, so though she was burning to know exactly who this Aslan was and why it was so important, she could not bring herself to say the name.

'Oh,' said Josie.

'It was years and years and years ago,' said Alabitha. 'Before anyone who is alive now was alive. Except for some of the trees, probably.'

'Which direction is it?' asked Josie. 'The carving?'

Alabitha told her and she walked up the stream for twenty yards or so on soft springy grass to the place. There was a mass of granite meeting her feet at about a forty five degree angle and she had to clamber up it a few steps and reach forward to touch the carving. The surface was worn and rough but the shape of the Lion's face was perfectly distinct. She could feel the whorls of the mane worked very clearly, the mouth closed in a calm and serious way and the eyes open wide. It seemed even larger than life to Josie, but she had never been close enough to a lion to touch one. She stepped back down onto the grass.

'I think it is splendid that you can make such things,' said Alabitha, who had followed her, and was standing closer to Josie than she had before. 'It must be wonderful to have hands.'

The strangeness of everything was suddenly overwhelming. Josie could feel tears starting to well up.

'I don't know what to do,' she said.

Alabitha shuffled awkwardly as if she was not used to humans being anything but imperious. 'You will probably think of it,' she said. 'Daughters of Helen always do.'

'I suppose so,' said Josie, in a small trembling voice.

Alabitha fidgeted nervously some more.

'You're sure to be here for some important reason, or you wouldn't have turned up at the Lion's Pool. I'll tell my father you're here and he will send someone wise to talk to you, and they will figure out what it is.'

'That sounds good,' said Josie in the same small trembling voice, thinking of her own father. 'Thank you.' She managed to pull herself together and not cry until Alabitha had trotted off. Then it was all too much.

After a while nothing had changed, but Josie felt better for the crying. She took off her coat- which was much too warm for this place- and her boots and stockings, and lay down in a shady spot where she could feel the deliciously cool grass on her feet. She listened to the tinkling water and the wind in the leaves and the strange birds and listened out for any other creature, but there was nothing.

'The wise gazelle will be here any minute, so I must be sure to stay awake,' she thought, and laughed a laugh that was only a little a sob to think she was waiting on a wise gazelle. But she fell asleep anyway.


	3. Further Up and Further In

_**Updated regularly in chapters.**_

_**The Kindle-friendly version is available at forgottenplanet dot com. (Google "Bride of Tash" to find it!)**_

**_Chapters are also readable there, and are updated first._**

* * *

Tash was awakened by the silence. For a very long time he had lain there listening to the shuffling and wheezing and jangling and occasional unhappy gabbling of the other sacrifices, and he must finally have fallen asleep, but he awoke with a start to a silence like death. No one stirred. No one wheezed or muttered nonsense words to themselves. It was yet harder to see than it had been, for some kind of thick fog had filled the chamber and the lights on the pillars spent themselves in muddled grey-green blobs and failed to illuminate anything more than a few paces distant.

'I hope they are not all dead,' said Tash. It would not really have been any worse for him to be chained up with some hundreds of dead bodies than with some hundreds of sacrifices who were to be killed in a few days at any rate, but it was a horrible thing to imagine, and frightened him every bit as much as it would you or me. He felt at the idiot boys chained to his left and to his right, but could not wake them, nor could he tell for sure whether they were breathing or not. When he moved, his chains clanked, but less than they should have, like they were clanking underwater.

'I wish I was anywhere else at all,' thought Tash unhappily.

A moment later things became yet more alarming, for Tash felt something crawling on his arm. It was a quick tickly rasping thing with too many legs, as big as his hand, and he could see it only as the merest flicker of movement in the gloom.

'I must be still and quiet and maybe it will not bite me,' said Tash to himself. He had learned this way of dealing with biting creatures through painful experience. So he sat very still as the something crawled down to his wrist and sat there in an unruly ticklish way like a newborn sister, and as another something of the same sort crawled onto one of his legs and scrabbled to his ankle, and then another, and another, until the rasping things were perched everywhere the chains bound Tash to the stone post. Then they began to gnaw. Not on Tash – for which he was very grateful – but on the fetters that held him. He could feel the patient grinding of their teeth in his bones, an inexorable gnawing that went on and on without ever slowing down or speeding up. He had the feeling that if these creatures with too many legs set their tiny minds to it they would simply keep gnawing forever through anything that was in their way, flesh and bone and metal and stone, year after year and generation after generation, until they had gnawed a tunnel through the world from one side to another.

After a long time the things with too many legs had chewed through all of Tash's fetters. The chains fell dully to the floor, one by one, and the many-legged things gathered in a vague mass before him. He could see their green eyes shining now, little pinpricks of light in the fog. They were looking at him.

'It is better to do something than nothing,' thought Tash, which was one of the proverbs he had heard all his life whenever he had been found doing nothing. He stood up, which was more difficult than he expected. First one of the many-legged creatures darted away into the darkness, then another one. The remaining green eyes watching him seemed to be brighter. He took a step in the direction the creatures seemed to be going and they took off before him in a rush, their eyes bounding like grith nodules in a pot of boiling water.

As Tash walked away from the pillars where the sacrifices were chained, the fog lifted and the eyes of the creatures grew brighter and brighter. The strange silence also faded, and Tash could hear the scrape of his own feet on the pavement, and the rustle of the many-legged creatures around him. There were more of them than there had been: more and more, until he could dimly see his injured hand by the glow of their eyes, and the shadows cast by their capering bodies. They were leading him away from the doors to the outside, across the vast chamber, deeper and deeper into the evil-smelling darkness.

'Now I am somewhere else, as I wished,' thought Tash. 'It is better, I suppose. How this chamber goes on and on. '

If it had been outside and lit, it would doubtless have seemed no great expanse, smaller than many of the grith fields in which Tash had spent his life; but it was inside and dark, so seemed to be without beginning or end.

But at last it did end: stone walls closed in around Tash, and the air grew damper and less evil-smelling. The creatures danced around him, steering him first one way and then another through what seemed to be a maze of passages, sometimes down, sometimes up, but more often down. The air grew damper yet, and the walls Tash came close to were slick with slime. Once they passed over a thunderous stream of water, and another time Tash had to climb over a statue that had fallen over to block the way. Tash would have liked to stop and examine the statue more closely, for he had never been so close to any of the great carven images which the Tower was decorated, but the many-legged creatures became so terribly agitated when he bent down to peer at it that he judged it unwise.

'After all if I scare them away I will have no light at all, and will never be able to find my way anywhere in the dark,' he thought. And he followed the creatures on, and on, and on, through the maze.

Tash was dizzy from watching the green eyes of the creatures, and weary from not being able to stop and ponder things, and feeling rather sore from one particular place he had been clouted that had not seemed such a big deal at the time, when the passage he was following ended abruptly in a wall.

Several of the creatures took off excitedly into the darkness, while others scrabbled up the walls and even clung to the ceiling above Tash's head. Before he had time to think of much of anything at all he saw a light that was not dancing and green. It was a bluish light like fire that was very bright – really too bright to look at directly – and it traced a line along the wall in front of him, from the floor to somewhere well above his head. Then it grew wider and wider, and was a door opening into a room, where everything was too bright to see. Of course the light poured out of this room as well, so it was just as impossible to see anything outside, but Tash was vaguely aware of the many-legged creatures capering into the room like mad things. A slightly darker patch loomed out of the brightness, took Tash by an arm and steered him into the room, less roughly than he was accustomed to.

'Stand still,' said a voice. 'Don't fall over. And straighten up.' It was the voice of a very old thalarka, and it spoke the words very carefully, as if they were made out of something fragile and would break if spoken too roughly.

Tash did his best to follow these sensible instructions. Little by little his eyes adjusted and he could make out the source of the voice. The unbearable brightness came after all from a rather small lamp, which filled the room with wavering blue light and a sickly sweet smell. The lamp hung from the ceiling above a stone table covered with mysterious devices, which under normal circumstances Tash would have been inordinately curious about. There were books, too, like the ones the tax collectors carried, but instead of one there were scores, stacked on the table and on shelves on the far wall. Clinging to the walls – and the shelves – were very many of the things with too many legs, shifting ceaselessly about and rustling like a crowd of villagers on a festival day. In some curious way Tash was quite sure that they were paying attention to the old thalarka; that he was their Overlord, and that their mindless whispering meant something very like 'sweeter than narbul venom is it to serve the Overlord'. In the lamplight the eyes that had lit Tash's way were nearly invisible, buried deep in their wrinkled beastly faces, and they looked every bit as horrid as Tash had first imagined in the darkness.

The thalarka had one withered arm and one blind eye, and stood hunched over so that this eye was level with Tash's eyes though if he had stood straight he would have been rather tall. He wore a necklace with a sigil of reddish-black stones, and with his remaining good eye he studied Tash with a furious silent intensity.

'Yes... yes,' the old thalarka said to himself. 'You will do.'

It was better to be told that he would do, than to be told he was perfectly and completely useless, Tash thought. He bowed his head and let his arms droop, but he let his arms droop less than he usually did when his elders spoke to him, and when he bowed his head he kept one eye peeking at what the old thalarka was doing.

'You don't appear to be witless,' said the old thalarka, keeping his eye on Tash while picking up a complicated metal instrument from the table. The lamplight reflected prettily from it. 'Can you talk?'

'Yes, Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One,' said Tash. 'What does that thing do?'

The old thalarka raised the instrument to his eye and looked through it at Tash, making a clicking noise in his throat. He adjusted a knob on its side, took it down and adjusted another knob, then raised it to his eye again. Tash watched these proceedings with fascination. He had not really expected the old thalarka to answer his question, but after making a few more adjustments he said something that must have been an answer.

'It uses certain little known properties of solar radiation to estimate the eckward component of the aetheric vibrations.'

'I don't understand,' said Tash. 'Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One,' he added hastily after a moment.

'Of course you don't,' said the old thalarka. 'If you did, you wouldn't be chained up under the Procurator's tower waiting to be sacrificed. You would be the apprentice of one of my rivals, and I would have brought you here to persuade you betray them. Or perhaps to torture you to death, as a warning to your master not to interfere with my plans.'

'I see,' said Tash. 'Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One.'

'Don't look so alarmed,' said the old thalarka, setting down the instrument and picking up another one – still keeping his one eye fixed on Tash. 'I have no interest in torturing you to death. It is quite clear that you are an ignorant peasant.' This new instrument seemed to contain some kind of liquid, which could be ejected in a very thin stream through a small tube when the old thalarka pressed a lever. He did this once, spraying a little of the liquid into the air, and the many-legged creatures seemed to find it of great interest. They began to seethe more rapidly, and a few dropped from the walls to scuttle across the floor.

'What is that?' asked Tash, forgetting to add 'Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One'.

'Aetheric essence,' said the old thalarka. Slowly and carefully, he traced a circle with the oil on the floor between himself and Tash about a body-length across. The things with too many legs dropped to the floor in numbers and began to cluster along the circle, climbing on top of each other in their eagerness to be close to it. Tash could hear the grinding sound of their teeth in his bones. It was a very unpleasant sound. It began to smell oddly, like the taste Tash got in his mouth sometimes when he had been clouted over the head.

'What are they?' asked Tash.

'Gnawers,' said the old thalarka.

'I have never seen them before,' said Tash.

'They are forbidden,' the old thalarka replied. For the first time, he took his eye of off Tash, to do something fiddly with one of the most complicated looking devices while he consulted one of the books on his table. 'The penalty for keeping them is death by fire.'

'Aren't you afraid I'm going to tell on you? No, you're not. Oh.' For the first time Tash considered that there might possibly be worse things than being sacrificed to the glory of the Overlord. The odd smell was stronger now, and the sound of the gnawers gnawing, without becoming any louder, grated more and more insistently on Tash's mind so that he found it hard to think of anything else. He glanced at the door, considering and then instantly dismissing dashing to it and running off in the dark.

'What do they gnaw?' asked Tash after a pause.

'Everything. Plants. Stones. Men. Even – if encouraged properly – the very tissue of space and time.' The old thalarka carefully adjusted a knob on the device, glancing every now and again to the book. It was open to a picture, rather than rows of ideographs, Tash saw – some kind of tangle of circles within circles within circles that he wished he could look at more closely.

'Is that what they're doing?" asked Tash. 'Much-knowing...'

'Oh, you are too clever by half,' said the old thalarka, amused. 'Of course. Of course that is what they are doing.' All the gnawers had clustered in a thick writhing mass around the circle of oil that the old thalarka had made, crawling over one another and sometimes biting through each other's legs by mistake. The air above them was starting to waver, like the air above the smokeless fires that were kindled in the temples.

Tash asked the question then that had first popped into his mind when he had been brought into the room, but kept being pushed back when he thought of other questions. 'What are you going to do to me?'

'Don't you worry about that,' said the old thalarka. 'It will be much more interesting than being sacrificed. Hold out your hands.'

'Why?' asked Tash. But he held out his hands, being accustomed to obeying orders. The old thalarka picked a length of silvery cord up from the table and tossed one end across to Tash.

'You don't want to let go of that. Just keep holding on, and everything will be fine.' The old thalarka's one eye glistened with excitement. He had kept hold of the other end of the cord, which now passed directly over the circle of gnawers.

Tash held the end of the cord tightly. It was comforting, despite everything that had been happened, to be told that everything would be fine if he just held on to it. 'What does it do?' he asked.

The old thalarka did not answer, but shifted from one foot to another in his enthusiasm, alternately gazing proudly at the seething gnawers and examining a dial on one of his devices. And a moment later Tash had forgotten that he had asked any such thing.

It was very like when the door had opened. There was a crack of bright light, but it was a crack in the air above the gnawers, rather than a crack in the wall. It swiftly got wider and brighter, and then everything inside it fell out of the world. That was the only way Tash could ever explain it afterwards. A little piece of the universe had been gnawed away at the edges, and it had fallen off into something else. The gnawers stopped gnawing; most of them scuttled backwards, while a few slipped over the edge of the void and were instantly whisked away.

Tash's eyes refused to tell him what was going on in the space above the circle. It was black and piercingly white at the same time, and it seemed to be in ceaseless motion, but not in any direction that Tash had ever encountered before. The silver cord he held disappeared into one side of it, swaying gently, and reappeared on the other. At the edge of the void the air was shimmering, and seemed to be rushing swiftly like water in a millrace; but the space itself he could not manage to get his thoughts around.

'Magnificent,' exclaimed the old thalarka. 'Exceptional. Look at how smooth the interface is! How stable the aetheric flux! If only Zmaar could see me now. If Tzorch knew how much I have surpassed him. The old fool!'

The whole thing was so fascinating that Tash forgot to be terrified, and stopped attending to what the old thalarka was saying. He tugged at the cord, ever so gently, to see what would happen. Nothing did. It was as if the void was an immovable object. He stared into the absence of universe, willing himself to make some sense of it. The old thalarka was quite right: whatever else this was, it was certainly more interesting than being sacrificed.

'Is that clear?' asked the old thalarka sharply.

'Yes,' said Tash without conviction, having no idea what the old thalarka had just said.

'I am sure the powers – inscrutable as They are – will find you an equitable exchange,' said the old thalarka, his eyes glistening with triumph. 'Do not let go of the cord.'

'Y-' Tash began. The old thalarka gave his cord the tiniest of tugs, and Tash's cord was pulled into the void with inexorable force, as if it was attached to a cart that had fallen over the edge of a cliff. Inwards, upwards, and otherwards, Tash was instantly and irresistibly dragged into a place where nothing made sense.


	4. Mostly Concerning Gazelles

_**Updated regularly in chapters.**_

_**The Kindle-friendly version is available at forgottenplanet dot com. (Google "Bride of Tash" to find it!)**_

**_Chapters are also readable there, and are updated first._**

* * *

In almost all places it is uncomfortably cold to sleep out of doors in your clothes, and Josie found that the Lion's Pool was one of them, even with her heavy coat. The scents of the night flowers were different, and the breeze brought no trace of smoke or sheep, but the night had the same feel as cold clear winter nights at home. She tried to curl up into a little ball and go on sleeping when she woke up, but tired as she was she could not manage, and had to get up and stomp backwards and forwards on the soft grass to keep warm. Her thoughts went around and around without getting anywhere. She was in a land with talking animals. For 'some important reason', the gazelle had said. She did not know what would happen to her here, and whether she would ever get back. She thought of all the little ways she had done people wrong, and how she might now never have a chance to make them right. She worried about how terrible Miss Miles would feel when she found out she was gone, and then how she might get in terrible trouble for carelessly leaving Josie to stumble over a railing into the ocean. She wondered what her father would think when he got the news. Around and around Josie's thoughts went, just like they had the night before she had left home to go to England.

By and by the birds began to sing – first one that had a melancholy sort of whistle, and then more and more, none of them familiar. Josie felt the breeze pick up, a breeze that was a little warmer and was heavy with the same vanilla bush smell of the dandelion-like flowers she had smelled the day before. And because you cannot worry forever about things you cannot help when there are things you can do something about that you should, Josie realised that she was really very hungry, and worried about finding something to eat.

'The gazelle - Arabitha – seemed to know something about people,' Josie said to herself. 'So they'll know I can't eat grass. Maybe they'll know something about where to find fruit and nuts that human eat. And there might be fish. I hope they don't talk. That would be horrible. The birds don't seem to talk; so probably the fish won't talk. Stop rambling, Josie.'

Then she heard the sound of great many hooves coming from the same direction as the warm wind. With the dawn came a crowd of gazelles, a couple of dozen, who arranged themselves in front of her in an orderly fashion like a school assembly. The lady gazelles and the smaller children were in one place, with the larger children off to the sides, the boys on one and the girls on the other. Out in front in the place where the headmistress would be in a school assembly was who could only be Caladru, prince of the gazelles.

'The Lion's peace be upon you, Lady Josie, Daughter of Helen', said Caladru, in a voice that put Josie in mind of a bass clarinet. 'I bid you welcome to the March Plains of Sha, on behalf of all the talking animals who dwell here, and put myself and all my people at your disposal. We have always done all that was in our power to aid the Sons of Frank and Daughters of Helen when they had need to call upon us.'

Josie had not imagined such an occasion being made of her arrival. 'Thank you, your majesty' she said, as politely as she could, and curtsied in the direction of Caladru. This seemed like an inadequate reply to Caladru's grand welcome, but she could not think of exactly what else she should say. After a long pause filled with the shuffling of youthful gazelle hooves Caladru continued.

'My daughter says that you have come from the sea, Lady Josie, and that you were summoned to the Lion's Pool on a quest, and now seek guidance on how to proceed further. My Aunt Radamatha knows many tales of the quests that have been made by the Lords and Ladies of Creation since the world was made, and I have asked her to listen to your tale and to provide you with what advice she can.'

'I am at your service, Lady Josie,' said another voice, the mellow golden voice of someone who has recently retired wealthy from singing on the stage, a voice that made Josie think of comfortably warm indoor afternoons on a cold day.

'Thank you,' said Josie. 'I suppose I must have been brought here, since I didn't do anything to bring myself. I was on a ship, and I fell overboard, and then I ended up here without there being anything in between that I can remember. There isn't anything like this place in the whole world that I know – we don't have any talking animals there, except birds that copy what people say, and in stories that people have made up.'

There was a loud murmuring of shifting feet and whispered conversations, just like there would be at a school assembly, and Caladru silenced it in almost the same way that a headmistress would, by raising his voice to say something very firmly and slowly with a hint of sharpness to it.

'We will now leave the Lady Josie to discuss these matters with Radamatha,' said Caladru. 'We will remain at a courteous distance, Lady Josie, in readiness should you require anything further.'

'Thank you very much, your majesty,' said Josie.

'It has been our Honour, my Lady,' said Prince Caladru, and he withdrew in a stately fashion, most of his clan following in disorder very like children dismissed from a school assembly. One only drew closer to Josie, and she was sure this was Radamatha, who had spoken before with the mellow golden voice. When she was close Josie found that she smelled rather like a sheep. Not unpleasantly, and with a wild deserty something as well; Josie thought of frankincense and myrrh.

'Thank you for helping me,' said Josie.

'I will do what I can,' said the gazelle with the golden voice. 'I have seldom spoken with men, and never anyone like you, Lady Josie.'

'Please, just Josie,' she said. 'Lady Josie sounds like someone old and important.'

'That is fine, Josie,' said Radamatha. 'But your proper name is something different again, is it not?"

'Yes,' said Josie. 'My proper name is Josephine Furness. The Furness is from my father's name.' She felt she should be encouraging to the young gazelle, so she smiled and said, 'It is a bit of a mouthful for Arabitha to remember.'

'A mouthful,' repeated Radamatha, as if the expression were unfamiliar to her.

'You are hungry,' she said abruptly, in quite a different tone. 'I fear my nephew does not think of such things. Of course it is the right thing to first ask a Daughter of Helen whether she wishes something to eat, and show her where some may be found. If you will come along with me?'

Josie walked along with Radamatha, feeling the first warmth of the sun on her face and hands. It should have felt like a dream, walking with a talking gazelle in another world, but it felt more as if her life in Australia had been the dream. She felt more truly real, more truly alive, than she could remember feeling since she was very young. There were many things she wanted to ask, but she could not decide where to start, and it felt so pleasant just being alive.

'If you wish, Josie, I can tell you the tale of how Aslan appeared in this place,' said Radamatha.

The same wild feeling of fear mingled with longing ran through Josie.

'You see, it is the other story that I know about a Daughter of Helen who came from far away, and this place, and Aslan, who is the one who makes all wonderful and unlikely things happen in this world, and I think it is connected in some way to the story that you are in now. But you don't know about Aslan.' Radamatha said this last in the same tone of voice she had used when she had said Josie was hungry.

'No, I don't' said Josie. 'I'm afraid I don't know anything at all about this place.'

They stopped so Josie could disentangle her skirts, which had snagged on a thorny bush. 'I am sorry, Josie' said Radamatha. 'I did not think of that. We can go around over here, instead.'

'Aslan is the great Lion who was there on the day that the world was made,' said Radamatha. 'He does not grow older, and he does not die, but only goes away for a time to some other place, and comes back when he is needed again. When the world was made he spoke to the talking animals and set them apart from the other animals, to watch over them and guide them rightly. And he brought from another place the first of the race of Men, King Frank and Queen Helen, to watch over all the talking animals and guide them rightly, in the same way as the talking animals watch over the dumb animals. That is how things are done in the northern countries still. This is a fig tree.'

'Thank you,' said Josie. 'We have figs where I come from.' She reached into the branches and felt about until her hand closed on a fig, which felt as if it were ripe. She plucked it and brought it to her nose. She had never been particularly fond of figs, but this morning it smelled more delicious than any fruit she had ever had. 'But things are different here than in the northern countries?' she asked.

'All these lands were settled by restless animals and restless men' said Radamatha. 'Talking animals and men are few and thinly scattered here, and these lands have always been the refuge of those who do not like being watched over. Here there is no one king to rule over all the Sons of Frank, and most talking animals seek to live in the lands where the Daughters of Helen are not, so that they might suit themselves.' There was a touch of rueful amusement in her voice as she said this last, as if she knew that the gazelles of the March Plain of Sha bore a little of the blame for the state of affairs she described. 'The worst of all the men who did not want to be ruled by the Kings of the North once lived north and west of here, beyond the mountains, in a land called Telmar.'

'Mmhm,' said Josie, plucking another fig while she chewed the last bite of the first one.

'The men of Telmar learned how to do evil things that the King would have forbidden them to do; things that Aslan had forbidden their ancestors to do. One of the things they learned was how to make people do what they wanted using magic. Then one of their wizards travelled north to Narnia – that is the land of the Kings whose fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers were all Kings, back to the time of King Frank – and put a spell on a boy there, so that he would leave his home and come away to Telmar after a certain time had passed. I don't know why the wizard put a spell on the boy to make him want to go away to Telmar. When the boy snuck away to go to Telmar his sister followed him and tried to get him to come back. She talked with him, and fought with him, and though nothing she tried was any use she did not give up but stayed with him, hoping to turn him back. And they came here.'

'Mmhm' said Josie.

'They were very hungry and thirsty when they came here, for it had been a bad summer, and many of the pools on the plain had dried up, and there were even fewer animals and men dwelling in this land than there are today. They ate and drank and recovered their strength, and the girl was trying again to break the spell the wizard had put over her brother when they heard the men of Telmar approaching from the west, and she prepared herself to fight them so that they might not have her brother, and in the proper form of the story is remembered all the things she said then. But when it seemed most hopeless the Lion, Aslan, appeared from the east. He defeated the Men of Telmar and broke the spell over the boy. Then he took the boy and the girl with him into Telmar, and they were with him when he defeated them and turned them all into dumb beasts to punish them for their wickedness. And afterwards the boy was the last king to rule over the south as well as the north, before the men of the south had their own kings, and he had the form of the Lion carved here.'

'Thank you for telling me the story,' said Josie. She thought what you have probably thought yourself about similar sorts of stories, that it was in some ways rather unsatisfactory story, in the way the boy and girl had just gone along without managing to do anything useful until Aslan appeared and fixed everything. 'But that is what most stories in real life seem to be like,' she thought to herself. 'People are dragged along by things that happen to them, and other people who are much more powerful than they are come in at the end and decide whether the ending will be happy or miserable.'

'I don't know that the story can have much to do with me, Radamatha. No one persuaded me to come here, and I haven't followed anyone – I just appeared. And you say that these men of Telmar were defeated long ago, so there doesn't appear to be any great trouble. Not that I could do anything about it anyway.'

Radamatha took a step closer, close enough that Josie could feel the warmth of her breath.

'You appearing is not the only thing that has happened,' said Radamatha. 'I have not yet told my nephew, but an owl came from the Northeast the night before last and told me that a man of Balan is coming this way – Balan is the place of men where the Kings of the South who are closest to Narnia rule. He is the one whose brother will be ninth of the Kings over Balan if he lives. The owl told me that he has heard of the treasures and secrets of Telmar, and thinks it would be great and heroic to go and find them. Maybe you are supposed to tell him not to.'

'Maybe,' said Josie dubiously. 'Why would he listen to me?'

'His name is Margis,' said Radamatha. 'Margis was also the name of the boy in the story. And I did not tell you the name of the girl in the story – it was Jozfeen.'

'That is a funny coincidence,' said Josie slowly, feeling like something with too many legs was crawling on her back.

'I don't think it is one of those,' said Radamatha. 'It is a wonderful and unlikely thing.'

'So it is the doing of...' Josie could not quite bring herself to say the name.

'Of Aslan, yes. If you wish, Josie, you can tell me more of your story now, but I think you are here because you are meant to speak with this Margis, and persuade him not to go to Telmar, like Jozfeen sought to persuade the other Margis not to go to Telmar.'

'I will tell you a little about me,' said Josie. She was still hungry, but she thought she had probably had as many figs as were good for her. She wiped her hands on her skirts in a way that would have gotten her scolded at home and sat down under the fig tree. Radamatha sat down beside her, and Josie told her all about growing up with mother and Gerry in a little town in Western Australia, and Miss Harker at the blind school, and how Ada Plummer – who was a year younger than Josie – was a terrible nuisance but it was hardly an excuse for being so unpleasant back to her. And she told Radamatha about the accident, and how she was being sent away to England to her father over the ocean when she had fallen into this new world.

'I cannot keep all those countries straight,' said Radamatha. 'You have so many of them in your world. And these ships you speak of, that burn stones to move against the wind.' She made a snorting gazelle gesture of amazement.

'It already seems so far away,' said Josie. 'Like a dream.' She paused a long time, listening to the birds and the milling gazelles, the wind in the trees, the splash of something in the pool that might have been a frog. The sun was already warm enough that she felt she would be more comfortable in the shade. 'This is a lovely place,' she said to Radamatha. 'I don't want anything bad to happen to it. I don't see why it should be me, but I can't think of any idea that is better than yours. I suppose we have to go and meet this Margis.'

Radamatha got to her feet. 'Even if I am wrong, Josie, you will be better off among other men, rather than gazelles. The men of Balan are kinder to outsiders than other men of the south. Shall I tell Caladru?'

'We could go and tell him together," said Josie. 'It seems the proper thing to do, somehow.'

So Josie and Radamatha trooped across the meadow and Radamatha told Caladru of their decision in quite a formal way, and Josie did her best to keep up, and there was a discussion in which Caladru decided exactly who would be in the party sent to guide Josie, and what each of them should be responsible for. Josie found it very interesting at the time but it would not be so interesting to put down all the details now. At the end it was decided that Radamatha should stay behind with the herd, but that Josie should go with Murbitha, who liked to listen to Radamatha's stories and was her apprentice, and Mirinitha, who was very good at finding water and hearing the approach of things that were trying to be quiet, and also two of the young gentleman gazelles, Zadru and Kodoru, who had a way of talking over the top of each other that made it hard for Josie to tell them apart. They were nearly at the age when it was the custom of the gazelles for boys to go off and find their own way in the world and see if they could collect a herd of their own, and they had recently spent a good deal of time wandering off to the northeast – which coincidentally was the direction Margis was said to be coming from - preparing themselves for this journey.

This having been decided the herd dispersed over the meadow by the side of the Lion's Pool, grazing in a disorderly way, with nobody taking pains anymore to stay politely away from Josie, and most of them coming in close to look at her and ask her questions and see if there was anything useful they could do.

'There is another tree over here that has something you might want to eat on it,' said Murbitha, who had a shy sort of voice. 'You can hold on to me if you like and I will lead you there.'Murbitha was quite nice to hold on to, with fur more like a well-kept dog than a sheep, and the tree which was on the drier edge of the meadow had a lot of leathery low-hanging fruit. 'I have seen the Sons of Frank break them open,' said Murbitha. 'There are juicy things inside.' Josie did this, and found that there were indeed lots of juicy things inside, stuck together like the little bits of a raspberry with seeds that you could eat. They were very nice indeed. These fruit were pomegranates, which Josie had not had before, and she found them every bit as messy to eat as you did the first time you had them.

Alabitha came eagerly up to Josie and introduced her sisters. 'We were quarreling yesterday and I ran off by myself, which is how I found you,' she said. 'I suppose when they tell the story of how you came here they will tell how I was the first to find you?'

'I suppose they will,' said Josie, with a laugh.

'Your feet are different than they were then,' said Alabitha.

'I took off my shoes and stockings,' said Josie. 'It is nicer to walk on the grass without them.' She wiggled her toes to demonstrate.

'It must be very strange to wear all those things,' said Alabitha. 'I don't think I would like it. Are you going to take off any more?'

'No,' said Josie. Though it was almost tempting. Being proper sort of clothes for going to dinner on a liner, they were not at all the most comfortable things to be wearing out of doors on a warm day. 'I am very used to it,' said Josie. 'It should feel very strange to me if I was not wearing them, and I would be horribly embarrassed if anyone else came by. Any other human being, that is. Not to mention sunburned.'

'I see,' said Alabitha, still fascinated by Josie's toes. 'I know you are looking for good things to eat,' she said. 'There are some plants that grow by the water that are very nice.'

'Please, show me,' said Josie. These turned out to be things a bit like spring onions that Alabitha and her sisters assured her were extremely tasty, but when Josie ate one she found it much nastier than the nastiest spring onion she had eaten and had to drink rather a lot of water to get the taste out of her mouth. Not everything in this new world was pleasant.

'I'm sorry, but I don't think those are food for people like me,' Josie admitted.

Alabitha was so downcast at this that Josie felt she had to give her a hug, but this turned out to be another difference between humans and gazelles. Alabitha leapt away in a panic of flailing hooves, and then apologised profusely from a safe distance. 'I am so sorry, Lady Josie, it just felt that I was trapped. I am so sorry. Please forgive me.'

'It's quite alright,' said Josie. 'I should have asked first.'

Josie felt rather queasy in the afternoon from eating nothing but fruit all day, and sat down to rest in a shady place where she could dabble her feet in the pool. As the shadows grew longer the gazelles drew closer together, and after a while they danced. First the boys and young men, then the girls and young women, and then all of them together, hooves stamping in unison in a completely different way from the heavy thump of horses in harness or the chaotic scramble of a flock of sheep. Then they did something completely different from any of the dumb animals of Josie's world: a thing she should have expected from their voices, but which came as a complete surprise regardless. They sang. The young lady gazelles began first, and then the young gentlemen joined in with a different theme that ran along beside the first one, and then the older ladies joined in with a slower sort of tune that seemed to carry both of the first two along with it, and finally Caladru added his voice. It was the most beautiful singing Josie had ever heard and she never found the words to describe it properly.

_The turning of day and night_

_Is the maker of events._

_The turning of day and night_

_Is the source of life and death._

_The turning of day and night_

_Is the echo of the song of Creation. _

_The turning of day and night_

_Is a soft two-coloured reed,_

_With which That-Which-Is_

_Disguises itself with appearances._

_Fast and free blows the wind of time,_

_But Love itself is a wind that stems all winds._

_In the tale of Love there are times_

_Other than the past, the present and the future;_

_Times for which no names have yet been coined._

_Love is the tune that brings_

_Music to the voice of life._

_Love is the light of life._

_Love is the fire of life._

When Josie was starting to doze off the four who were to be her companions trotted up to her. A few of the older gazelles were still softly singing, and the air had the feel of night.

'We will stay with you from now on until we reach the Sons of Frank,' said Murbitha and Mirilitha.

'We will watch over you while you rest, Josie, and you need not fear,' said Zadru and Kodoru.

'Thank you all,' said Josie. And the four gazelles lay down around on four sides, so she was a good deal warmer that night than she had been the night before, and felt safe and comfortable in a way she had not felt since her mother had started having her turns.

_[The Gazelle's song is adapted from lines in 'The Mosque of Cordoba', by Muhammad Iqbal]_


End file.
